An Innovative Social Life Cycle Decision‐Making Model for Assessing Social Sustainability: A Case of Green Hydrogen Production

Md. Abdul Moktadir and Jingzheng Ren

Sustainable Development, 2025, vol. 33, issue 5, 7753-7774

Abstract: The energy sector is shifting to clean energy sources to achieve the goal of global carbon neutrality. Green hydrogen is considered a key player in decarbonizing various sectors due to its high energy density and environmentally friendly combustion. However, the social implications of green hydrogen production (GHP) remain underexplored. Particularly, there is a lack of studies on developing a comprehensive social life cycle decision support framework to assess its social sustainability performance. To address this gap, a novel decision‐making framework was developed by integrating a social sustainability assessment criterion system taken from the Product Social Impact Life Cycle Assessment (PSILCA) database, a trapezoidal‐fuzzy set (TrFS)‐based Level‐Based Weight Assessment (LBWA), and a TrFS‐Multi‐Attributive Border Approximation Area Comparison (MABAC) model for assessing S‐LCA indicators and social sustainability performance of the GHP supply chain, focusing on a case study. The findings revealed that the “Fair salary” is the most critical social sustainability indicator for the GHP supply chain, with a weight of 0.1232. The social sustainability performance assessment of various regions using literature‐based S‐LCA data depicted that “Australia” outperformed other regions. The study highlighted the importance of addressing social sustainability issues for the GHP supply chain to ensure a just and inclusive energy transition. Through case studies and sensitivity analysis, the model demonstrates its applicability in guiding policymakers and industry stakeholders toward socially responsible GHP supply chain development. This research contributes to sustainable energy discourse by offering a robust tool for balancing social sustainability objectives in the hydrogen economy.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.3536

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:33:y:2025:i:5:p:7753-7774

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainable Development is currently edited by Richard Welford

More articles in Sustainable Development from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().